Stormbringer: Bungou Stray Dogs

[CODE; 03]

I want to see Chuuya suffer as a human being

When was it that the poet said the hue of the sky was the color of sorrow?

That day, the Yokohama skies were a clear, sorrowful blue.

The sounds of passing cars, the sounds of trains, the sounds of the crowds of the city, all of it was sucked into that blue sky.

Chuuya-sama sat motionless in the middle of that blue sky.

Chuuya-sama was halfway up the tallest building in Yokohama. He was sitting on an uneven platform of the building that jutted out, devoid of any handrails or safety ropes. If you were to lean your body forward just a few inches, you'd fall to the ground far below.

We couldn't see Chuuya-sama's expression from the ground several tens of yards away. He didn't move in the slightest, just stared intensely at the sky in front of him while the wind blew around him.

He'd been in the same position for hours. I looked up at his figure. I couldn't contact him because he wasn't answering his phone, and even if I shouted at him from down here, he wouldn't be able to hear me.

"What's he doing?" Shirase-san asked as he stood next to me.

"I imagine he doesn't want to be talked to." I replied, looking up at him.

I guarantee this was what Chuuya-sama was thinking— 'It's my fault Detective-san was killed'.

After the incident at the city police station, we re-examined our evidence. Verlaine had a blue cell phone, the exact same one Detective Murase had used, prepared at the supply shop. Once I examined Detective Murase's phone, I found it was an older model of a flip phone with an operative history and hard drive that'd been in use for six years. Though, the serial number of the phone itself showed it was a new product that was manufactured only half a year ago. The exterior paint was skillfully peeled off and some scratches were recently added onto it (probably using the floor or nails) to help disguise it as a used phone.

However, I was able to confirm that the phone book and call logs were from Detective Murase himself, and I received some verbal testimonies from the other detectives that Detective Murase had used that blue phone for quite a long time.

In other words, someone switched the phones. It was cleverly disguised in a way so that even Detective Murase hadn't noticed it.

But what for?

Ah, one more thing. There were traces of someone adding a program to the phone's internal drive so that all the files deleted themselves after a certain period of time had passed. From there, we could guess that Verlaine had most likely wanted to listen in on somebody Detective Murase had contact with.

To do that, he replaced the phone and waited for Detective Murase to receive a call. Since the wire-tapping program already caused the files to delete themselves, it's safe to say he heard what he needed to hear.

And because he had served his purpose, Detective-san was killed.

This death was preventable.

If only we had paid more attention to the phone he got at the supply shop. Or, if only we had realized how strange it was that Verlaine looked like he was killing time by having a conversation instead of killing Shirase-san right away. If we had done that, maybe Detective-san's death could have been prevented.